David Edgar has a fascinating essay at the LRB about the theatrical legacy of John Osborne. It's funny, I clicked on the link thinking "Oh, it's months ago that I first was reading reviews of this new Osborne biography, surely this is completely belated?" and yet it is a completely different piece than any of the others I've read, a good example of what the London Review of Books really does wonderfully well: Edgar uses the biography as the jumping-off point for an extremely perceptive and persuasive account of Osborne's role in twentieth-century British theater.
And a sidebar bonus: Jeremy Harding on a Syd Barrett biography published in 2003. (But I must disagree with him on The Wall; I haven't seen the film since the 80s, I will admit, but I remember watching it again and again with my brothers when we were in high school--it was one of only four or five movies that we had in the house, not a carefully selected pack but a slightly random set of oddments, the others as I recall being two excellent ones that should be in every collection--This Is Spinal Tap and The Shining--and two completely random ones--Romancing the Stone and Magnum Force. Readers are invited to contribute their own "surreal small movie collection" lists in the comments....)
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For years, the only video my family owned was Something Wicked This Way Comes, starring Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce. I tried watching it years later, but the magic was gone.
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